Edinburgh Military Tattoo

Superb marching band video. Military marching from the New Zealand Army Band at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Great choreography, the band still looks like a tight military-style unit with some more free-form stuff thrown in, including playing to the home crowd with a bit of a fling. Impressive volume from an ensemble of less than 40 players. Highlight moment - flirty kicks during the Austin Powers theme. Good stuff.

Oh, a little more digging on the net reveals that the passage in the middle when they put down their instruments is a traditional maori dance.

Today is a super-special day.

My doglet turns 15 today.

When she got out of the house that day in early June of '98, I thought she was gone forever. Pitifully, I just couldn't let it go - I went to the SPCA and looked at the inmates every day for 9 weeks. I left crying most days. I made it through the worst of my grief, but I still hoped I'd see her again, and more than anything I hoped she was with someone who was doting on her and being kind to her, and not dead in a ditch somewhere.

The ninth week, the 9th of August I went into the SPCA and saw her poster had been covered up on the bulletin board by the picture of someone else's lost pet. I said "Um, my dog's picture is covered up," at which point they scrambled to uncover it - got to keep the daily-visiting crazy lady happy, I suppose.

4 days later, on Friday 13 August, I came home from work and had a voice mail that started off:
"I hope I'm wrong but I think I have your dog. When we found her she just had a red rolled leather collar on that had a tag that said 'devil.'" Hallelujah, it WAS my dog. [In my defense, the tag was a pewter tag that said "angel" on one side and "devil" on the other, but the angel side hammered against her collar buckle and wore down completely. This may have been a sign.]

They'd found her after she'd been on her own for 5 weeks. She was dehydrated, sunburned, malnourished with skin allergies and partially bald, and probably happy as a clam to be free-ballin' around the world. She was about 20 miles from home.

They thought she had been abused and tied up and neglected, but they soon figured out she was someone's baby when at bedtime she jumped on the bed and demanded to be let under the covers, at which point she shot to the foot of the bed and curled up at the woman's feet.

They went to Florida on vacation 3 days later and they said that all the way there, she looked out the back window in the direction of Texas.

Fortunately for me, Doglet terrorized the cats and chickens on this little farm, and the other dogs and the horses weren't fond of her either. She proved useful for that family in fact-finding the wisdom of having a Jack Russell Terrier, which their kids had been asking for. After a month of having her, she demonstrated how ill-fitting she was for that environment.

Anyway, they had a stray pup come up to their farm on Friday 13, and they simply couldn't keep one more animal. They took the pup to the SPCA in McKinney Texas and walked through the door and saw my sign on the bulletin board.

She said "I think I have that dog."

The employee said, "oh, that lady really needs her dog back."

So, I got her back and we've been on bonus round ever since.

This was a profound moment in my life, because I realized then I would trade all my possessions to have my little dog back. Anyway, it's been a great run, and I'm grateful for her every single day. From Friday 13 onward, it's been bonus-round gravy days for me and my dog.

Then last year on November 1, the day after her 14th, she made yet another deft escape and got run over by a car right before my eyes. I saw her running into the street and saw the car coming and knew that I was witnessing the last instants of my beloved pet's life. It was overwhelming.

The hit was the best it could have been - the car was perfectly centered over her and a tire didn't get her, so she rolled like a weenie under it. She was in shock, and they gave her an i.v. at the vet to keep her hydrated, but nothing was broken. What a relief.

Anyway, here we are a year later, and I'm so happy I still have her, so we're in double-bonus gravy days on overtime. Long may she wag.

OK, here I am at Kinko's again. My cable internet is not going to be installed until NEXT Monday, so this may be the lay of the land until then.

I was reminded yesterday of my favorite joke. I'm really bad at telling jokes because I chase rabbits and prattle on, generally losing my thread, but this has been a favorite since childhood, so I actually can remember the details in the proper order.

A young country preacher is out visiting the shut-ins in his parish when he stops by the home of a little old lady who has gone blind and doesn't get out much. She invites him in and he takes a seat across a little side table from her chair, and she commences to chatter on, starved for company as she is.

Directly, he notices a bowl of plain unsalted peanuts on the table and he takes a few, finds they are delicious, and begins eating them continuously as he occasionally interjects the one-word acknowledgement to indicate he is listening.

After about an hour of this, he says that he's got to be going when he says "oh my goodness! I just realized I ate your whole bowl of peanuts! I'm so sorry!"

The little old lady smiles and sweetly says "well that's ok, honey, anymore since I lost my teeth, I just suck the chocolate off anyhow."

Yes, well, obviously I'm easily entertained. I suppose this is my favorite joke because it's high on the gross-out factor but not obscene. I think it's adorable, actually.

Trajectory into mental illness:
Yesterday I bought Amy Sedaris' new book I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence. I woke in the middle of the night and read some of it. She's on David Letterman rather often, and mom says she reminds her of me, which I'm off-kilter enough to take that as a compliment. I loved Strangers With Candy ( yes, I WILL be buying the DVD when it comes out November 14), but having read the book, I understand why people think she is mentally ill--something I've been accused of more than once. She has an whole other aesthetic sensibility than high-design ever intended. Or, maybe being high has contributed to her design sense. The great thing is she has all her favorite recipes, and it's all photographed in the orange-filtered method of Better Homes & Gardens early 1970s photography in its books on cooking and design - you know what I mean by that , right? (along that same vein is James Lileks' superb Interior Desecrations with pee-your pants text he's added - Priceless!).

So anyway, I went back to sleep and dreamt I was reading Amy's book, and I dreamt there were several references to me in it "phlegmfatale says..." with entertaining tips from moi. I ran out into a busy, crowded street with the book to show people, and then I took a bubble bath. What does it all mean?

Anyway, I've been working like a fiend on some jewelry, and I have a design I really like right now, and I can't wait to show you. Y'all have a great week. I may not make the blog rounds again until I get my cable 'net, so please don't think I've forgotten your blogs just because I'm not commenting for a bit. Cheers, people!

I realize this is horribly crass, but for some reason, it delights me to see the word "doodie" on a billboard. This one's for you, Dick! This billboard is right around Cedar Springs & Mckinney, heading toward the Crescent. Had to stop and snap it Wednesday night.

Went to mom&pop's house for dinner Saturday night (yummy!) and niece and nephew were over and being their adorable selves. He's a live wire and has some serious moves that are somewhere between karate and gymnastics, and he likes to play "Heavy Weapon" on popcap games - not bad for being barely 4. She was quiet and sweet and played the piano for us. I was always the most musical in our immediate family, and I gave her my piano a few years back when I abandoned my ambitions as a classical singer, so it's incredibly gratifying to see her excelling at and enjoying music so immensely.

Life is sweet.

I'm exhausted from a killer week, so I'm going to unwind with this pitifully disjointed post.

I just did a mud mask (smells heavenly) from I Coloniali which is an Italian company. I was thinking what a grand age we live in when we can smear mud from an Italian pigsty on our pampered pusses. Ain't that special?

I'm reading "The Bohemian Manifesto" which has been most enlightening. I have learned that I'm not a slob - I'm a bohemian. When people come to my home, if I say something about sorry I've left things in such a mess, I've often been told what an interesting mess I have. I get obsessed with weird things for a bit and then I move on to the next weird thing that strikes my fancy. I know I mentioned my barf bag collection, and the Aeroflot barfbag is the crown jewel. I know: you envy me.

One of these days I'm going to weed my stockpiles out and sell a lot of 150 snow domes on ebay. Someday. Anyone here collect plastic mid-century Santa crap?

I'm working on a charm design I'm SO excited about. I'll put some on here once I've finished some. I love fabricating and soldering precious metals and making something, but it's also nerve-wracking business. I'm using chip solder which is 65% sterling silver and these little chips that are less than 1mm wide, so they are hard as the dickens to pick up and even harder to put precisely where you want them to go. I'm hopeful that the more I do this, the easier it will become.

Finally, I was showing someone an apartment this week, and one unit was a long space with just two windows at one end, thus it had a much lower price per square foot than our typical apartment. I asked the woman what she thought about it, and she said it made her feel confined and that she kept expecting the commissary to come by. I asked what that was, and she said when you're in jail the commissary comes by every day.

Oh, ok.

I mean, how do you respond to that? I can only imagine what a spectrum of thoughts washed through my countenance at that moment - my mom always said I couldn't hide what I was thinking. eek.

Have a good weekend. Stay off bike paths in cars. Remember to take time to love up on your housepets.

Oh - And one more thing - Over at This and That Frog Hair, lilfeathers pointed to a great blog called Iraq The Model with a terrific post on big-picture thinking from yesterday by an Iraqi living in Iraq. Very interesting reading.

The weather in Dallas was unusually foggy Wednesday and I found myself out and about with camera in tow. I took a photo of the enormous light at LBJ & Preston, and I got a space-shippy future-echo of the light due to its reflection somewhere in the camera mechanism. Coolness. Golly, I love my camera.

I eat sometimes at a diner where you may end up seated next to strangers, and invariably one overhears conversation whether they want to or not. Generally, it's very congenial and invites comment from strangers - a pretty friendly atmosphere. Today, however, I was sitting quietly trying to digest my magazine when a clucking trio of hens were seated next to me.

These ladies were of a certain age and talked about their hysterectomies ("I had mine in '99" one said) as though they were members of an elite club. THAT was bad enough - I had to choke down my lunch while hearing about people's female troubles. Ick.

But it got worse. So-and-so was violently ill and went to her doctor and he prescribed one antibiotic after another until one day, he wasn't even in the office and they referred her to a urologist, who miraculously cured her mystery illness with one little pill. With the same breathless reverence you would use to describe the town's most exclusive caterer or interior decorator, one woman said "urologists are so great!" and the other ladies twittered their hearty agreement.

She went on to say that her urologist had many famous patients, including a rock and roll superstar whom she named. Somehow, I doubt one of England's all-time superstar rockers stops between L.A., NYC and London in Dallas for a quick check of the old plumbing. I could be wrong: said urologist may be declaimed far & wide on graffiti in the hallowed pissing grounds of the rich and famous, but then again, who gives a rat's ass?

I think if I had the sad occasion to visit a urologist, I'd keep mum about the whole event and try to put it behind me, as it were. But that's just me. What do I know?

I went into a store this weekend for a quick look-round, and it was packed with men, women and children scrambling for bargains and filling up baskets. It was dazzling - it looked like the day after Thanksgiving.

Oh, and I paid $1.99 per gallon to fill my gas tank yesterday. Thank you, Karl Rove for lowering the price of gas and for turning off the hurricane generator this year.

And what's this bit of news about the Dow Jones venturing up above 12000 repeatedly recently?

Hmm. I'd say considering the crippling blow 9/11 dealt our economy--particularly the airline industry--it's a marvel to see things in such a boom a mere 5 years later.

Then it occurred to me today that along about 1992, election year and right after our first big foray into the Persian Gulf, I was seeing all these bumper stickers and headlines that said "it's the economy, stupid."

Funny, but the current critics of the executive branch seem almost mute about how well the economy is going. Now it may just be a fluke here - y'all all over the rest of the country may not be thriving and having loads of extra dough to splash out on new cars and new houses and luxury condos that we do here. Or maybe I'm just seeing the extra business locals are getting from the Katrina transplants.

I'm just saying...

One more post about another potentially embarrassing situation on Saturday.

We had our dogs along, and in all the excitement of hundreds of dogs at the lake for a doggie event, my dog got a touch of the di-reer. I had baggies in my pocket, and I dutifully (heh!) did my best to congregate the bits of poop-slick into the plastic bag. I know what you're thinking: sexy.

We sat down to listen to the band for a minute, and about 5 feet from my chair was a callow youth sitting in an apron, obviously working at a concession stand or some such for that event. Having just arrived at that spot, the doglet copped a squat near him and a few pathetic drops of yuck dribbled out onto the grass. The kid sneered at the dog and then made eye-contact with me and I smiled my biggest grin and made the Lyndy England two thumbs up, like I was so proud of everything that came out of my baby.

Seriously, after the drive of shame, nothing could have embarrassed me - I'd already pegged and had nothing left to give!

Thanks for all the comments - I feel much better about the whole thing now.

Some times I'm mired so deep in clusters that I wonder if I exist merely as a cautionary tale for others.

Much of my time here is spent deriding the boobery of others and pointing out idiocy that merits the venomous rancor I am so keenly equipped to dole out. Well, I'm nothing if not an equal-opportunity offender, and I'm not going to pull punches when I'm guilty of a phenomenal bit of boobery. My only hope is that you will learn from my errors, one of which I will tell you today and the other soon to follow. The one in today's post is much funnier (to me) although it was a lot more embarrassing to experience at the time. The other bit of boobery no doubt will come home to roost like ripples in a pond, but more on that later.

Now, usually when you screw up something, if you're lucky, no one will see it and you can correct it and make everything right. If you cut someone off in a car, hopefully you don't cause an accident and you can sheepishly mouth the word "sorry" (i.e., I'm an idiot) to other motorists, and hopefully you haven't stoked their ire hotly enough to provoke the can of road rage they are just dying to open up.

Rarely does one face a gauntlet of shame that lasts more than an instant, thankfully. When you feel particularly culpable, waves of humiliation can keep lapping at the banks of your conscience for days, weeks and even years down the road. Going forth and sinning no more(or at least not sinning in that way again) is a great remedy to keep the feelings of worthlessness and doubt at bay, and in extreme cases, we have been blessed with a plethora of pharmaceuticals to bludgeon such negative emotions into oblivion.

Saturday I experienced something so monumentally horrific, socially speaking, that I am still trying to process it. It was super-awkward. Here's what happened:

I was going to a local lake with a girlfriend and we were meeting other friends there at a named point in the park. About 15 years ago or so, I rode around the lake on my bicycle a couple times a week with friends, and I knew its paths and roads well. However, since that time, the layout of motorways has changed with regard to bike/pedestrian paths.

My friend was driving and we were going in the right direction, I knew, but I wasn't sure exactly where we should turn off. We were following a car and driving very slowly, mindful of pedestrians and cyclists while also looking for our friends. There must have been a sign that said "no vehicles beyond this point" somewhere along the way, but we certainly didn't see it, and sometime the car ahead turned, but again, we were looking ahead and not noticing where or why they turned off. (Also, other points in the park have poles in the path about 4 feet apart which would prevent a vehicle such as a car from entering a restricted pedestrian/cycle zone.) Next thing we know, the road is narrowing and narrowing and we suddenly find ourselves on the bicycle path at water's edge, a paved strip that is barely wider than the vehicle.

At this point, there is no doubt we are in the wrong place and we are looking desperately for a way to get off the path. Meanwhile every person we see either flips us off, yells, curses or very imaginatively deploys a combination of the three. My friend said "Phlegm, I just want to crawl into a hole and die!" We're laughing, but it's that nervous "what fresh hell is this?" awkward sort of laughter.

From the window, I asked a woman "we don't know how we got on this path and we don't know how to get out, can you help us?" She was surprisingly gracious (at this point we were fearful of being stoned to death, so a kind word went an awful long way) and told us that the path only got more narrow with no outlet whatever ahead, and that we needed to turn around and go back the way we came.

We pulled over onto the grass and turned around, and then some rocket surgeon yelled "get off the grass!" There's just no pleasing some people. Get off the path? Get off the grass? Make up your mind.

Mind you, we'd just come about a half mile in probably 10 minutes that seemed like 45, what with all the rancor, and now we were heading back to re-visit head-on the purple-faced rage of folks ranging from urban whole-grain earth-shoe latter-day hippies through to weekend-warrior extreme cyclist white collar guys - eek.

As one big doughy frat-boy vented his spleen in our direction, I thought "yeah, we're on the wrong thoroughfare, but I'm not the one with the wedding tackle on display in a swampy, petroleum-product pair of biker shorts." If I'd been clever, I would have just held the L-is-for-loser symbol up to my forehead to let people know "uh, yeah, we noticed we're, like, on the wrong damned road, already."

I got home and called me mum, and she chuckled and said "now those cyclists have had a taste of how it feels when one of them is in the road on the highway." Somehow, I don't think they were making that intellectual stretch at that moment, but it was a welcome fresh perspective.

Dad laughed and laughed--we both did-- and he said he would like to have been along for that ride, that it sounded funny. It was funny, but it was mortifying, and I honestly wish it hadn't happened. We weren't driving wildly or recklessly, and we certainly wouldn't have run over a person under any circumstance, but it was a major screw-up. Of course, it's preferable that we'd never ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it's not as though we maliciously set out to ruin someone's day - it was an honest mistake. It's incredible how from a benign sate you can suddenly blunder your way into something that turns into a huge mess.

Yeah. We're dummies.

Anyway, I hope your weekend was happily devoid of anything approaching the painful lessons of my weekend.

Uh oh. It's looking like I won't make it out to the State Fair this year after all, alas. No fried coke for me. Yup, they've figured out a way to imbue a little ball of dough with liquid coca-cola inside, and then the dough ball is deep-fried and a cola sauce and whip cream are drizzled over them, or so they say. You have to wonder how they come up with this stuff, and every year it's something new.

The deep-fried Oreos appeared last year, I think. So far, they haven't come up with the spaghetti taco, but odds are they will, evenutally. Actually, even though I haven't had one since I was probably under 10 years of age, I'd sort of like to have a candied apple now that my braces are off, if only for that nook-yoo-lar red coating that's probably bad for you.
Maybe next year.

Speaking of my teeth... Before braces, my molars were snug up against each other and the front and centers were a little more spaced out. Food never got caught between the molars because it was physically impossible to fit between there, and the front teeth didn't get food stuck up there because of their opposite-of-kung-fu-grip. NOW, however, they are pretty uniformly spaced, and I can floss 3 times a day and every single time I get swampy bits of salad greens and nefarious white blobs out from between the teefs, and all of it, well, decaying, is the best way I can put it.

And speaking of that, here's a question someone can maybe help me with. If there's someone you see on a casual or friendly basis, at what point is it advisable to tell them their breath needs a little work?

Believe it or not, I can seriously lack assertiveness when it comes to this kind of thing, and I simply clam up and don't mention it, all the while hoping my watering eyes don't give them the wrong idea. I take criticism so badly that it's hard for me to give it, because I don't want to hurt someone's feelings - is that silly of me?

Don't start thinking it's the softer side of Phlegm. I'm still the same embittered weirdo you've come to know and vex over.

Oh, and what's going on with Blogger & pictures lately? Frustrating!

OK, this may be a bit rushed, as I am knackered and dying to get to bed.

Things are going pretty well, and it seems I've finally found my stride in this over-committed/underslept schedule I've been keeping. Thursday was one of the best/worst at work, with funny things happening that I can't even talk about.

One amazing thing happened this week that left me feeling like the last of the gallopin' goobers. rightly so. SOrry, will have to finish this post later.

So, I had a much longer post that was quite entertaining, but I decided to abbreviate the whole mess to simply state that people don't just commit identity theft to access funds from your bank and credit cards - they can also have an entire criminal life listing your name birthdate and SSN as the responsible party, FYI. Something to think about...

Thanks for indulging those two rants this week. Some people are slow to catch on, but I always knew the email of the species is more deadly than the mail. Anyone crafty enough to con people into paying them to navel-gaze in D.C. shouldn't need to be told that.

Yes, I washed my hair Wednesday I am happy to report. I know how relieved you must be.

OOOOH, little bit of heaven - when we were leaving the country fair after my dad's horseshoe triumph last weekend, I stopped by a vegetable stand and bought 8 luscious green tomatoes for $10 from Tennessee, which mom fried up proper on Wednesday night. OK, I know they don't translate well owing to the fact that grease in a photograph never conveys the true glory of the first-person experience, but they were so marvelousI had to include a photo the little deadlies on my blog. The thinly sliced green tomatoes are dipped in flour and corn meal then fried. My toes are curling just remembering it. Also, it only occurred to me to snap the photo near the end of the platter, but I knew you'd want to get a gander at them. Yummy.

Speaking of food, for any foodie/film afficionados out there, Tampopo is a superb Japanese film that sort of orbits around the theme of food. For anyone who has seen it, my favorite vignette is the guy with the toothache and the little boy with the carrot and sign - incredibly cute and sweet.

LEE HARVEY'S
2ND SEMI-WHENEVER
CHILI COOK-OFF
AND BUTT SCRATCHIN' FIESTA
SATURDAY 10/21/06
COOKING STARTS @ NOON
JUDGING AT 3PM
DRINK SPECIALS ALL AFTERNOON
NEED A RECIPE?
WWW.CHILI.ORG

Perhaps this should be added to your busy agenda this weekend, Big Dick & Kelly. What's not to love about a Butt Scratchin' Fiesta? Good times.

If you have a weak stomach, you may want to skip this dirty girl post. .

My hair is curly and I like to wear it that way, but one does tire of the same old thing, day after day.

I reckon if we can put a man on the moon, science and nature should provide me with the wherewithal to sport stick-straight tresses on occasion. When I wear it curly, I never brush it or it will just fuzz up like a pissed-off kitty, so there's no telling how many lint-balls or threads or cinema tickets plastered in my Gordian locks I've walked around with, oblivious. Well, ignorance is bliss.

I wash it every couple of days, but drying it straight takes a lot of time, and that's pretty much how I wear it all the time these days.

Friday: the air was a bit cooler and drier, which makes drying my hair much easier. Yummy, silky, limp-as-a-rag hair. Yay.

Saturday: Storms at night have left a bit of moisture in the air, and it gets a bit wavy. Fair enough. Still silky and nice and I can run my fingers through it. Uh oh, caught out in the rain, though with an umbrella, well, I can feel it curling.

Sunday: Wow, VERY curly - the curliest I've worn it in a while, oh well, it's the one day off this week, why not?

Monday: Hey, it looks exactly like it did yesterday, and it looked really cute yesterday. I'll wash it tomorrow.

Tuesday: Crap - woke up late, MUST wash hair, going to be late to work, (looking in mirror) well waddayaknow? My hair looks fabulous! I think I won't wash it after all.

So, are you gagging? I'm grossing myself out - 5 days without washing my hair. It's camper hair. It's caught-in-the-wilderness-without-products hair. It's road-trip hair. Eek. Amazingly, it doesn't smell as bad as I would have imagined. Then again, the fall allergies - maybe my sniffer has gone off.

Well, that's the whole story - just that I've grossed myself out thoroughly.

But wait! There's more: my goal for the immediate future in my life is that someday soon on a Thursday night I'm going to go to the grocery store. Then when I come home from work on Friday, I'm going to put on pajamas and not leave the house and not wear anything but pajamas until Monday. I may clean, I may do productive things, I WILL shower and I will put on fresh pajamas, but I will not pass Go and I will not collect $200. My ass will be planted for one solid weekend. This I do solemnly swear.